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Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises Review

Four years after releasing the commercially and critically
successful The Dark Knight, Nolan
ventures back to Gotham to deliver a tale that seems more content with
delivering preachy, quotable dialogue than actually creating and developing
characters and a story viewers can relate to and care about.

The comparisons between this final entry into Nolan’s Batman series and its two predecessors
are unavoidable. For starters, Rises plays
out more as a direct sequel to 2005’s Begins
than The Dark Knight. That is to
say, the story of Ra’s al Ghul was apparently incomplete at the end of the
first film, and after watching Rises,
it seems like it would have been far more appropriate to deliver a more
meaningfully paced story of al Ghul over the duration of three films rather
than the story with The Joker (not to say that story wasn’t brilliant). My
point being that, as a trilogy, Nolan’s Batman
seems to have its criminal chronology out of order. But that’s only a minor
grievance compared to the other weaknesses I picked out of the film.

Like many trilogies before it – and primarily Spider-man 3 – the third installment of
this series loses a great deal of its depth by introducing a number of
characters who have had no prior connection to the series, yet are triumphantly
significant here. Along with those characters come storylines that aren’t ever
quite as fleshed out as they should be. The most prevalent of these is that
between playboy Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and business competitor John
Daggett. In this universe, eight years have passed, and much of the
sociopolitical scene has transgressed into a new kind of Gotham. In this world,
Wayne Enterprises is on the brink of collapse due to Wayne’s seclusion from the
outside world. However, despite Daggett taking up quite a share of screen time,
the hand he plays in the chain of events is relatively small given he is
usurped by – and essentially an appendage of – the primary antagonist, Bane,
portrayed by Tom Hardy (who is clearly continuing to channel his energy from Warrior).

The second of these is Bruce’s new relationship with his
butler, Alfred (Michael Caine). They convert from a respected friendship to a
bitter difference of ideals quickly and with little emotional buildup prior to
the boiling point. This only made me wonder if Caine perhaps had other business
to attend to other than Rises instead
of a planned plot device. Especially when Alfred’s departure from service has
no noticeable effect on the way Bruce Wayne conducts his day to day life. After
losing the only person with whom he’s shared every moment of his life, time
moves on without a beat. Fresh on the subject of sour relationships, viewers
will remember the death of Rachel Dawes in The
Dark Knight and how it profoundly affected the character. Here, it’s
alluded to with what seems like no other purpose than to remind viewers that
the filmmakers remember her (though there’s no mention of the Joker anywhere).

Lastly, we have the second-in-command deputy commissioner
Peter Foley (so understated and irrelevant that I actually couldn’t recall his
name without the aid of a Google search). He contributes little to the movie
except for a brief representation of Gotham’s perception of Batman. However,
that Gotham loathes the Caped Crusader for his alleged murder of Dent is no
mystery to the viewer and needs not be reiterated through what seems an
unnatural obsession with catching the bat.

That goes without saying that there are some welcome
additions to the cast. The first, a returner from Nolan’s 2010 masterpiece Inception, is Joseph Gordon-Levitt who
plays John Blake, an energetic and well-meaning cop who Nolan uses as a
contrast to our modern Batman. He represents what Batman stood for prior to the
death of Dent in The Dark Knight in
bitter contrast to the current Batman who’s more or less content with silently
fading into obscurity instead of preserving a system of justice in a corrupt
city. Batman has regressed into something that, despite making the ultimate
sacrifice for Gotham, isn’t a peerless and stalwart defender, but a coward
running away from the past that haunts him.

Another good face is Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) who gives the
character the type of luster we’d expect to see from Batman. She nails a
character who’s smart and sexy without glorifying herself as a sexual object,
which is rare and pleasant in modern film. While Hathaway does nail her
performance of Catwoman and Selina Kyle from start to finish, her character is
undermined by one of the weakest scripts churned forth by the Nolan brothers
(more on that later).

A second returning face from Inception is that of Tom Hardy who plays (forgive the pun) the
hardy terrorist Bane. His physique matches the part as perfectly as possible
without appearing absurdly out of place in the gritty, realistic Gotham of
Nolan. Faults occur at his delivery of lines which often seem far too comically
detached from the serious undertones tackled in the previous two films. In
fact, everything in Rises seems like
it’s been taken much less seriously. The quips are more frequent, the color
schemes are all fairly bright, and the script is hard to take too seriously on
account of its poor structure.

The last actor to make an appearance from Inception is Marion Cotillard who is strangely
flung into the universe as though you’re intended to have some familiarity with
her. Bruce Wayne surely does, and after following him through two movies, you’d
expect to know a good deal of his acquaintances.

I’ve managed to throw a few low blows at the script for the
film, so it’s only fitting that I make good on those words by explaining my
motivations for saying so. I’ll preface those thoughts by saying that all of Nolan’s
films have an intriguing complexity to them that captivates and amazes. The
same could almost be said here except there seems to be a much greater focus on
developing deep and riveting prose than actually creating interesting and
relevant dialogue. At times, the actors don’t seem quite sure of the meaning of
the words, at that may be what adds to the comic delivery, particularly with
Bane. With all the winding and interweaving of plots and character arcs, the
extensive exposition becomes overwhelming, and watching the film at times seems
more like reading ancient literature – you can grasp the gist of a paragraph
but the individual sentences seem to hold little value. For that, the plot
often seems to be moving in unfathomable directions.

Much of Rises’s
preachy nature stems from all those extra characters. Even having seen Begins and TDK, you feel as though you’ve been flung into a foreign world with
little knowledge of who resides in it and what exactly their station is. That
much only clears up as early as the end of the first act – and even there,
there’s confusion to be had. Luckily, this is a superhero film and there’s a
healthy dose of action to be had. Unfortunately, like the dialogue, it’s heavy
and drawn out far longer than necessary, oftentimes for the sake of preachy
lectures from one combatant to the other. The choreography isn’t quite as
compelling as that in the first two films. It plays out very slowly onscreen,
and compared with lackluster editing, even becoming engrossed in the action can
be difficult.

As you can imagine, a poor screenplay often isn’t
representative of a strong plot, which this isn’t. As I said earlier, it’s
not difficult to know what happened in general, but looking at individual
scenes for the essence of systematic storytelling can be frustrating. This only
worsens for those who do have a tight
knowledge of the previous two films. For the first time in his directorial
career, Nolan walks you through the allusions characters make to events in the
past film. The first flashbacks of Dent as Two-Face are chilling, but as
flashbacks become more and more frequent, they begin to remove you from the
immersion of the film and prevent you from connecting the dots yourself. It
feels as though Nolan is attempting to keep those who may not have seen the
earlier films in the loop, but assuming that’s true, he’s disregarded the simple
fact that a sequel isn’t meant to be seen without having first experienced the
preceding body of work. Were that not enough, the myriad flashbacks of events that actually occur during the movie seem to cover up the actors inability to memorize their paragraphs of dialogue.

What I believe is most important to address in terms of plot
is the ending to this film. Most viewers presumably expect walking into this
film is to see the end of Batman. Instead, they’re treated with a tease that
leaves open the possibility for the sequel in much the same way Batman Begins did. They never had to
explore the joker card that Commissioner Gordon showed Batman, but by ending
the film like that, a sequel was entirely plausible. Here, John Blake’s
discovery of the Batcave combined with the fact that his discovery is the very
last frame of the film, leads any viewer to believe that the legacy of Batman,
though Wayne is out of the business for good, shall continue in one form or
another.

Technically, the film has as many merits as TDK, but definitely falls short of both
it and Begins – but does so for
surprising reasons. Having increased his budget and implemented a great deal of
additional explosions and gadgets/vehicles for Batman, it’s clear that none of
them are taken care of quite as well as the less frequent designs of the
previous films were. The prime example here is “The Bat,” Batman’s new flying
car, which always seems out of place, even when perfectly framed. And on the
topic of framing, it’s everything you should expect from cinematographer Wally
Pfister. He captures every moment divinely and manages to make the
five-foot-ten Tom Hardy appear to dwarf the dark knight in every scene.

In the technical field, the big issue with the Nolan trilogy
has always been the sound design and mixing. Bale’s voice as Batman has always
been a point of controversy. To Nolan’s credit, he attempts to quell the
complaints, but it seems that all of his masked characters are destined to
speak inaudible words to straining listeners. Batman’s voice fluctuates between
clear and raspy, and Bane’s voice is occasionally completely inaudible. If the
integrity of independent words weren’t already questionable, a viewer might
feel slighted at not being able to comprehend – by no fault of their own – the dialogue.
At one point, a conversation between Bane and Batman becomes muddled, with the
latter channeling some of the former in his voice.

The score by Hans Zimmer isn’t nearly as impressive as The Dark Knight’s, though some of the
reused tracks will certainly bring a smile to your face, especially those
played when Wayne first puts on the cowl. Everything else seems to be drowned
out in a flurry of gunfire raining down from the smoke of explosions.

Those expecting to see Nolan deliver a work that trumps
Batman’s last adventure will be let down by the final installment which ups the
budget without delivering on promises of emotional depth, character complexity,
and a gripping story. Though an overall enjoyable experience, a plot that
treads in murky water and a conclusion that fails to conclude the trilogy make The Dark Knight Rises a film that,
unlike its direct predecessor, I can fathom critics and fans alike feeling
displeasure towards.